The City of Kaunas in Lithuania has launched an anonymous one-stage design contest for the planned National Science and Innovation Centre of Lithuania, known as Science Island. The competition, developed with Malcolm Reading Consultants, encompasses the design of the €25m (US$27.5m, £20.8m) centre and an urban integration plan for with its proposed home on Nemunas Island – located close to the city’s historic Centras district and cultural institutions including the

After nearly two years of legal disputes, George Lucas has finally pulled the plug on plans for his Museum of Narrative Art in Chicago, with the director now thought to be eyeing San Francisco or Los Angeles for his legacy project. Blaming delays over a lawsuit from a parks group opposed to development along the city’s waterfront, Lucas said in a statement that he would be taking the museum to

UPDATE: The high-profile expansion of Quebec’s first publicly-established museum by Rem Koolhaas’ Office for Metropolitan Architecture (OMA) has opened to the public today (24 June). The new semi-transparent Pierre Lassonde pavilion – named after the Canadian philanthropist whose donations have helped fund the expansion – has increased exhibition space in the 83-year old Musée national des beaux-arts du Québec (MNBAQ) by 90 per cent. The museum showcases and preserves Québécois

Danish architectural firm Dorte Mandrup Arkitekter have unveiled designs for an arctic visitor attraction designed to draw visitors to Greenland. The proposed Icefjord Centre in Ilulissat – a town in the Qaasuitsup municipality in western Greenland – will help develop Greenland’s tourism and will demonstrate the history and culture of the ice fjord, as well as highlighting the dramatic melting of the UNESCO-protected Greenland ice sheet. Scheduled to open in

Russia’s State Hermitage Museum is to open a satellite site on the Barcelona waterfront in 2019. Designed by architect Íñigo Amézola, the US$43m (€38m, £29.2m) outpost, to be constructed in the Port of Barcelona, will cover 15,500sq m (166,000sq m) and will have seven galleries split over five storeys, as well as a large entrance hall, restaurant, cafeteria and auditorium. Renderings of the building show a cube structure sat within

A video has been released providing an insight into the design process behind Shigeru Ban’s Aspen Art Museum (AAM), which opened to the public last year. The film, released by Redsquare Productions, features interviews with Ban and the museum’s director Heidi Zuckerman about the museum’s striking design and its impact in the city.

Work has started on the Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners-designed International Spy Museum, which is making a a US$162m (€143.2m, £102.1m) move to property developer JBG Companies’ L’Enfant Plaza. The deal was announced on 15 June after 18 months of negotiations, with the 140,000sq ft (13,000sq m) space in Washington D.C. funded through US$65m (€57.4m, £41m) coming from the museum’s owners and the remainder sourced through public fundraising and corporate

Today (17 June), the British public can finally see for themselves the long-gestating expansion to London’s Tate Modern art museum, masterminded by Herzog & de Meuron. The architects transformed the derelict Bankside Power Station on the River Thames into the museum in 2000 to house the UK’s collection of international modern and contemporary art. The Tate was expected to receive two million visitors each year, but was soon welcoming closer

The architecture studio of David Adjaye have won the international competition to design a new contemporary art museum for the centre of Riga, Latvia. The Latvian Museum of Contemporary Art Foundation today (16 June) announced that Adjaye Associates’ vision for the museum – which imagines a highly-animated tilting roof geometry – has been selected ahead of six rival submissions, including from Caruso St John Architects and Henning Larssen Architects. Adjaye

The under-development Louvre museum in Abu Dhabi took a major step forward this week when the temporary sea wall surrounding the structure came down, flooding the area around the building. Contractor Arabtec Holdings has removed the 14m (46ft) temporary hydraulic cutoff walls used during the main construction phase, with the sea water now enveloping the museum, giving it the appearance of floating on water. "This delicate process is the result

New London mayor Sadiq Khan has claimed culture will be as important as housing, transport and the environment in his administration. Speaking at the press opening of the new Tate Modern in the UK capital, Khan vowed to increase the number of cultural facilities and public spaces by “embedding culture in London’s planning system.” “For too long culture has been merely a nice-to-have,” he argued. “We’ve got to change that.”

Tadao Ando has told CLAD about his design for a new contemporary art museum in Paris which will house the vast collection of billionaire businessman François Pinault. Pinault’s plans to transform the French capital’s historic Bourse de la Commerce into the museum were unveiled in April this year. Ando was selected to work on the project following a previous collaboration with Pinault to renovate Venice’s 17th century Punta della Dogana

The Smithsonian Institute is teaming up with the V&A Museum to create a collaborative permanent exhibition space at London’s Olympicopolis site. The plans, which date back to January 2015, originally called for a stand-alone Smithsonian to act as an anchor for the site upon its opening in 2020/2021. The amended plans now come at significantly less cost to the Smithsonian, with the V&A partnership giving the institution a permanent presence

Pritzker Prize-winning architect Peter Zumthor has designed the latest installation for Norway’s National Tourist Route (NTR) initiative, where the country’s most scenic roads are dotted with fantastic viewpoints and architectural rest stops. Allmannajuvet, a commission that dates back to 2002, is finally set to open 8 September, just months after the opening of Utsikten (the View), a precipitous triangle slab balanced on a dramatic mountainside. Zumthor’s Allmannajuvet site consists of

After plans were revealed at the end of last month to build a permanent home for World Rugby in the sport’s birthplace, Manchester-based design firm Mather and Co have been appointed to create the attraction in Warwickshire, UK. Billed as a “fully-interactive and immersive museum”, the Hall of Fame will be located within the town of Rugby’s art gallery, museum and library. Mather has a strong portfolio of sporting experiences,

Designs by a number of architects competing to design a €30m (US$34m, £23.6m) contemporary art museum in Latvia have been unveiled. The seven teams – shortlisted from an invited list of 25 global architecture firms and each paired with a local design team – include Adjaye Associates and AB3D; Caruso St John Architects and Arhitektu birojs Jaunromans un Abel; Henning Larsen Architects and MARK arhitekti; Lahdelma & Mahlamäki Architects and

The Museum of London is looking into the possibility of opening a viewing gallery at the top of London’s upcoming 1 Undershaft. The towering skyscraper – which will be as tall as the neighbouring Shard if approved to open in 2022 – will be located in the heart of the capital's financial district. When Eric Parry Architects unveiled the plans in December 2015, the design envisioned large areas of public

The leader of South Korea’s newly-created Administrative City has launched an international architecture competition for a National Museum Complex (NMC) that will help make the destination “a global culture city”. Choongjae Lee, the city’s administrator, has vowed to build “the world's most beautiful and liveable city” through investment in architecture, technology, urban planning and design and environmental sustainability. The Administrative City, also known as Sejong, was established in 2007 and

Zaha Hadid’s Mathematics Gallery for London’s Science Museum will open to the public on 8 December 2016, it has been announced. Hadid studied mathematics at university, so the project was close to her heart. Called The David and Claudia Harding Gallery in honour of two of its major donors, the space will explore how mathematicians, their tools and ideas have helped to shape the modern world over the last four

The president of France Francois Hollande was on hand yesterday (31 May) for the pre-opening of La Cité du Vin; a new international cultural wine centre for Bordeaux, France. Designed by Paris studio XTU Architects, the complex is a permanent 13,000sq m (140,000sq ft), €136m (US$151.3m, £104m) visitor experience celebrating the history of winemaking. It opens to the public today (1 June). The building’s curving form was designed by architects

New York’s Bronx Museum of the Arts has announced plans for a multi-million dollar architectural overhaul, resulting in more space for the institution’s public programmes and exhibitions. A public-private partnership between the museum and city of New York, the US$25m (€22.4m, £17m) project is being funded by the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs and overseen by the NYC Department of Design and Construction. Venezuelan-American architect Mónica Ponce de León and

Danish company Kvorning Design & Communication are simultaneously developing projects across all of Norway’s World Heritage sites, creating bespoke exhibitions for each site celebrating the country’s history. Kvorning beat a number of Norwegian architecture firms in a design competition for the contract, which includes the DKR24m (US$3.65m, €3.25m, £2.55m) development of a visitor centre at each of Norway’s eight World Heritage sites. Included in this list is Struves Geodetic Arc,

25 years on from its inception, work is nearing completion on Newmarket’s £14m (US$20.4m, €18.2m) National Heritage Centre for Horseracing and Sporting Art, which sees the Palace building and stables transformed to create a state-of-the-art museum dedicated to the sport of horseracing. Celebrating more than 350 years of sporting history, Mather & Co are behind the plans, which gained Heritage Lottery funding in 2012 to the tune of £4.25m (US$6.2m,

David Chipperfield Architects have presented the schematic design for the new Nobel Center in Stockholm to the public, weeks after the controversial project received the green light from the city council. While the architects have maintained their initial concept for the building – which will house the Nobel Foundation headquarters and a museum for the organisation – the design has been developed in order to “strengthen its public character” The

Lausanne in Switzerland has unveiled plans to combine the city’s three major art and design museums into a single cultural hub, with all three institutions getting new homes as part of the landmark development. Known as Plateforme10, the three museums will sit on 22,000sq m (237,000sq ft) of repurposed industrial land next to the city’s main train station. Laid out as “an open terrace, an esplanade revealing the scope of

The first images of the long-awaited extension to the Tate Modern art gallery in London have been released ahead of its official public opening on 17 June 2016. The Tate Modern was created in 2000 by Herzog and de Meuron, who transformed the derelict Bankside Power Station on the River Thames into a home for the UK’s collection of international modern and contemporary art. The architects reunited eight years ago

DGT Architects have been awarded the Grand Prize 2016 by the French Architects Overseas Organisation (AFEX) for their work on Estonia's new national museum. The studio will collect the award on 26 May in Venice to coincide with the opening of the city’s 15th architecture biennale. DGT won an international competition to design the new home for the Estonian National Museum in Tartu by challenging the competition brief. Instead of